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So, if you were unaware, 2 nights ago my husband and both wound up with an inglorious bout of the up chucks. While we still aren’t sure what it was from, we are pretty sure it was from something we ate. It landed us both in the bathroom for a night and in bed for a day and a half. While we are well on our way to recovery, somethings are still feeling a little unsure to us, including bacon.

Of course this lovelyness hit us right at the tail end of my bacon curing process. I will confess that I did not have TCM (tinted curing mixture) that is recommended for the curing process. I seemed to remember that it was only different from salt in that there were nitrates added to keep the meat red and to preserve the shelf life. So yesterday, despite some lingering nausea, I oven smoked the bacon for 3 hours and chilled it overnight. This morning I thick sliced my masterpiece and put it in the oven.

I’m currently still waiting for it to come out of the oven, but I’m nervous. It doesn’t really smell like bacon… to me it smells more like ham. Although my hubby just told me he thinks it smells like bacon. I did smoke it with alder wood, which smells more like a camp fire than hickory or applewood. I guess time will tell. It could be the lingering stages of the illness that are turning me off, or it could be that the bacon just isn’t good.

—5 minutes later—

The bacon is finished cooking. It looks like bacon, and the smell, well, I had temporarily forgotten that I added truffle salt to the curing mixture. So the truffle is definitely standing up to the smell of the alder wood. I did taste it, and it tastes ok. I’m not thrilled. I admittedly hold myself to a pretty high standard, but the texture seems a bit off to me. I’m not sure if I’ll try this again without the TCM. But, I will try this again.

3 Responses to “Bacon, the colossal failure?”

You really need the “pink” salt, or TCM, to make bacon because the sodium nitrate will prevent bacterial growth at the danger-zone temperatures used to cure and smoke meats. It is, in fact, the sodium nitrate that makes bacon taste like bacon, not the smoking process.